The best part about working with teens, but also sometimes the hardest, is that every few years you get a whole new crop of teens to work with. This means that you can repeat programs, expanding on what you learned the first time(s) you did a program. With a new set of a teens an […]

If you’re like me, every once in a while you need some inspiration for your next makerspace or program idea. In the year 2018 it seems like our first impulse is to go to Pinterest, which is a great resource that can in fact be inspiring. It is not, however, the only and it is […]

Behold, I have found a new photo app! As I mentioned last week, a friend fell into a button maker group and they talk a lot about two things: 1) The Canon Selphy printer, which I reviewed last week and 2) The Rhonna Designs app, which a lot of people in the button making community […]

When I began thinking of creating a Teen MakerSpace, I knew that one of the things I wanted to include was a digital media lab or station. My goal was to teach my Instagram and meme loving teens how to create their own Instagram worthy pics or memes. And given the number of super cool […]

Regular readers know that I have been on a roller coaster journey trying to learn how to do screen printing in order to host a program at the Teen MakerSpace at my library, The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH). There were tragic fails, epic highs, emotional angsty, and some down right […]

Because this year’s summer reading theme, Libraries Rock!, is music based, we have been trying to find ways to make our various MakerSpace activities music oriented. Luckily for us, we have a guitar pick punch that hasn’t been used very much in our space. Outside of the obvious – you can use it to make […]

Making t-shirts have traditionally been some of my most popular programs throughout the years as a YA/Teen Librarian. T-shirts can be immensely cool and we choose them, often, as a form of self expression. Last year we did an entire series on altering t-shirts and it was popular and fun. One of our programs taught […]

In our Teen MakerSpace, we have kind of drifted into a model where we have themes to unite our making, which teens can choose to participate in or not. Some teens, we have found, need some type of guidance while others do not. So for the month of February, we wanted to do something that […]

Librarians selecting activity series should always seek out coherent instructions bolstered by visual information where needed, and laid out in such a way that young people are never left searching for the next step.

All things old are new again, and enamel pins are all the rage. In fact, I picked up some super cool Dumplin ones from Julie Murphy at TLA. And you can buy them at a lot of craft and hot trendy stores. Hot Topic, for example, sells a wide variety of enamel pins. But […]

Publisher’s Book Description: When Leo, an Italian championship swimmer, and Naomi, a science genius from California, are two of the twenty-four teens drafted into the International Space Training Camp, their lives are forever altered. After erratic climate change has made Earth a dangerous place to live, the fate of the population rests on the shoulders […]

Jewelry making has been pretty popular in our Teen MakerSpace, and I really wanted to give metal stamping a try. However, the individual components always seemed more expensive then something I wanted to spend just to try something out. Fortunately, I found a complete metal stamping kit at Target for only $24.99, and that seemed […]

If you’re looking for a quick, easy, and relatively cheap way to give back this holiday season–and also plan a program with your teens–I’d suggest making holiday cards to donate! This time of year gives everyone the jitters, and channeling that extra excitement and energy into creativity is a great way to unwind. I ran […]

I’ve had my personal Silhouette Cameo for about a month now and last week, we ordered one for The Teen MakerSpace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County. I’ve only tapped the surface of what I can do with the machine and it has a lot of uses. For example, it can […]

For a variety of reasons, libraries are just as much in the business of getting rid of books as they are purchasing them. One, having shelf space for the new means we have to get rid of the old. Many books become outdated, inaccurate, overly worn, and no longer popular. So yes, we discard books. […]

Recently while cruising the craft store I came across two items that greatly intrigued me: 1) A Gelli Printing plate 2) Jane Davenport acrylic stamps These are two different types of art styles, but I used the inspiration of both and realized that it is a type of monoprinting or printingmaking that is being done […]

Sometimes an amazing craft idea has to change direction to make it work. That’s what happened with this project, for a few reasons. First, the inspiration: How cool is that?! A DIY Magic 8 Ball is something my coworker and I stumbled upon while preparing for our superstition-filled Friday The 13th escape room, and it […]

This summer as part of our Summer of Shirts, we did a very low-tech version of screen printing, which turned out to be incredibly popular. So I was excited to learn that the Silhouette Cameo can be used to do a more traditional type of screenprinting. It works really well and I HIGHLY recommend it. […]

So I got a Silhouette Cameo and I was trying to figure out how to use it, and how to use it with teens, when I stumbled across an easy and fun craft idea. You can do it with or without a Silhouette Cameo, it’s easily adaptable. I made my examples using the Silhouette Cameo. […]

I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure out how to use and evaluating the Silhouette Cameo for our Teen Makerspace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH). You can read my initial thoughts here: MakerSpace Mondays: The Silhouette Cameo – a review MakerSpace Mondays: The Silhouette Cameo […]

Since its inception in the fall of 2014, Downers Grove Public Library’s teens have been busy creating in our Media Lab! Teens have created documentary films in our Viewfrom the Director’s Chair workshop, photography in our Viewfrom Behind the Lens workshop, and music demo recordings in View from the Sound Booth. The creativity, passion, and […]

Earlier today, I talked about the Silhouette Cameo Vinyl Cutter: MakerSpace Mondays: The Silhouette Cameo – a review. So if you buy a Silhouette Cameo, you’ll probably be making a variety of vinyl projects. Not all vinyl is the same, so here’s a little Vinyl 101 brought to you by high school librarian Dani Fouser. […]

This past week TLTer Robin Willis came and spent the week with me and visited my library (The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, Ohio) and the Teen MakerSpace. Her visit coincided with the exploration and evaluation of a Silhouette Cameo 3 machine which we are considering for the Teen MakerSpace. Here’s what […]

As school librarians, we are driven by our mission and our vision, by our national standards, by the needs and interests of our communities, and to some degree, by our own talents, passions and dispositions. We are all about inspiring learners to think, create, share and grow. We are all about becoming empowered leaders who […]

Got the maker bug but don’t know where to start? Check with the very people you hope to entice: your students. Panelists Laura Fleming, Tamiko Brown, and David Jakes offered their advice in the webcast "Build a Great Makerspace."

This summer I was honored to participate in the SLJTeenLive event (if you have never attended, you are missing out on a wealth of information so put it on your calendar for next year). I also wrote an article about it for SLJ which you can read here. Today I am sharing my slides with […]

Our newest MakerSpace station at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County was inspired by a teen I know in Texas, and it has proven to be very popular. Technique Used: Cross Stitch Supplies Needed: Cross stitch fabric Craft floss Cross stitch needles Small cross stitch hoop Small scissors Small cross stitch patterns […]

Monday night our local school district – where I live, not where I work – hosted a district wide STEAMFest and I took my family, but I also went to scope things out – as one does. Overall, this was a well crafted event that I would love to host (on a slightly smaller scale) […]

I can obviously not begin to take credit for the fabulous idea of Book Face as it is undoubtedly something that you have seen all over the Internet. What I want to share with you, however, is how we did our Book Face and why we chose to do it in the way that we […]

On Wednesday I am honored to be a part of this year’s SLJTeenLive event. I will be talking with several other librarians about library programming “On a Budget”. I, specifically, will be talking about creating a Teen Makerspace on a budget. You can find a preview of my presentation here at SLJ. You can register […]

I maintain that a genuine staple of a good MakerSpace can be found in Legos. Make no mistake, Legos are not cheap, but they have a versatility about them. And you can get around the cost of Legos by buying random bulk packages off of Amazon. You have no idea what kinds of pieces you […]

Arguably one of the most complicated buttons I have ever made involved learning how to use GIMP to turn a portrait into a silhouette PNG which I could then use for other types of art. To be fair, I set out to make this button because I wanted to learn how to cut a person […]

Button, button, who makes the button? I do! Teens do! But how? Today in the second part of our series on buttons in the Teen MakerSpace, I want to talk with you some very basics about designing a button. For the purpose of this discussion a button insert will refer to your final circle image […]

Earlier today I shared with you a summary post about button making in makerspaces. Using the hashtag #ButtonFun, I and some Twitter followers have been sharing our favorite button making tips and a gallery of our creations. Here’s a roundup. The #ButtonFun Gallery// Storify by TeenLibrarianToolbox Mon, Jul 17 2017 20:33:04 Edit The #ButtonFun […]

One of our most popular stations in our Teen MakerSpace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH) has been button making. We enjoy making buttons so much that a couple of staff members have purchased their own button making machines for personal use at home (hello, yes I’m one of the […]

Here are all the modify your t-shirt posts in one place with a gallery of some of our finished products. Click on the link for the instructions. TPIB: Meme ALL the Shirts! (Heather Booth) Mod-A-Tee @ Your Library – Fun with T-Shirts: Sharpie Tie-Dye, Puffy Paint, Spray Painting MakerSpace: Mod-A-Tee Making Hot Glue Stencils and […]

So the Summer of Shirts is over. Last Monday was our last day and we took all the ways we transformed shirts in the previous weeks – Sharpie tie-dye, Low Tech Screen Printing, Transfers, and more (links at end of post) – and taught our teens ways that they could then transform those shirts into […]

Our Summer of Shirts is coming to an end (today is our last day) and last Monday was hands down one of my favorites: I taught teens how to use Canva to design their own images and then print them out onto a transfer sheet and make them into t-shirts. Why Canva? I wanted to […]

Earlier I shared with you 3 ways we are making fidget spinners in the Teen MakerSpace at the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH). Today I am going to share with you 3 additional ways we have had fun creating our own fidget spinners. All three of these ways involve using a […]

This summer is the “Summer of Shirts” in the Teen MakerSpace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH). Every Monday we are teaching our teens a different way that we can make or modify t-shirts. So far we have done Sharpie Tie-Dye, puffy paint, and low-tech screen printing. Last Monday we […]

This past week we spent some time setting up a DIY Fidget Spinner station at the Teen MakerSpace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH). There are no shortage of DIY Fidget Spinner tutorials out there and we tried several and landed on the following three for our DIY Fidget Spinner […]

I learned about MakeDo Cardboard Construction Kits while at TLA Annual earlier this year. We bought several kits for our Teen MakerSpace and a fun new station was born. A basic kit comes with a safety saw, a whole punch, several screws, and some hinges. Everything works great except for the safety saw. The […]

Yesterday I sat in my Teen MakerSpace with four teens and we tried to build a Lego car that would move by voice activitated LittleBits. We did not accomplish this task. In fact, we could not figure out how to attach the wheels in a way that would move. As we built the car, the […]

This weekend the Wonder Woman movie is finally here! And June 3rd, Saturday, has been declared Wonder Woman day in libraries: DC Celebrates Wonder Woman Day with Massive Global Event. We will be celebrating on Saturday at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH) by making Wonder Woman cuffs/bracers. Supplies needed: Used/empty […]

The other day a fellow librarian asked me if I had read a book yet and when I responded no, she replied, “oh that’s right, you’re all about making now, you don’t really do books anymore.” It has taken me a couple of days to process this information and to form a real response. The […]

Branding. It’s a thing we talk a lot about in all walks of life, including libraries. And branding is more important than ever with our prolific use of social media. When you share something on social media, you want an image to share with your post that is easily recognizable, immediately associated with your brand, […]

I recently had the pleasure of attending – and speaking – at the annual Texas Library Association conference. Today I am going to share with you 5 Makerspace tools I learned about. MakeDo Cardboard Construction Kit Make Do are cardboard construction pieces that work as nuts and bolts for cardboard. This means that you can […]

When I first began transforming my teen space into a Teen MakerSpace, I was adamant that the space had to be tech, tech, tech heavy. All tech, all the time. I pushed back hard against suggestions that I should do things like have gel pens or paint. Part of my concern was legitimate, cost and […]

I spent yesterday casually demonstrating to the teens in the Teen MakerSpace how one project can turn into many, many projects. Making isn’t just about making, it’s about re-making and transforming. It’s about thinking outside of the box. It’s about pushing the limits of what you know and learning new things. So yesterday we explored […]

For some time now I have been on a quest to get a screen printing station into my Teen MakerSpace. My research involved reading a ton of books, a lot of trial and error and visiting a local art studio that did traditional screen printing. The big stumbling block for us is that to make […]

Like most teen services/ya librarians, I’m heavy in the midst of planning my teen summer reading programming. This will be the second year of planning that incorporates our Teen MakerSpace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH) and we know based on our experience from last year that our current model […]